RSS feed

A screenshot of a tool called NetNewsWire - a RSS reader

For those who don't know, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Introduced in 1999, it is now 24 years old in 2023! In really simple language, it's a single file which is always up to date with certain information from a website. Check the RSS feed of my blog. You will see all the articles listed on the page.

If you read books, you may have noticed how one book or author leads you to the next book to read. Similarly, great bloggers point you to other great bloggers. Larger the number of blogs grew, the more I struggled to keep up with it. The bookmarking system failed for me and the email subscriptions... well, it was bound to fail. Dozens of newsletters every week and keeping up with them felt like a chore rather than a fun reading session. When the unread newsletters number hit 200+, I just hit unsubscribed to all of them.

Later, I stumbled upon Stammy's 'Hello, RSS' post and I felt hopeful. I installed NetNewsWire -- a tool that allows you add multiple RSS feeds (aka blogs) -- almost 2 years back and haven't looked back since! Now, when I like someone's writing, including those who don't write that often, I automatically get their writing at one click. I no longer dread the reading and living happily ever after...